Google Earth Exposes North Korea's Secret Prison Camps

Google Earth / One Free
Korea

Human rights activists are turning to Google Earth to identify
the vast network of prison camps that dot the North Korean
countryside and hold as many as 200,000 people deemed hostile to
the regime.

Rights groups are pushing the United Nations high commissioner
for human rights to open an international investigation into
Pyongyang's "deplorable" record on its citizens' rights,
including a system of political prisons that has operated for
more than 50 years.

On January 18, the North
Korean Economy Watch website announced that a new camp had
been identified alongside an existing detention facility in
Kaechon, South Pyongan Province.

Using newly provided Google
Earth images, analyst Curtis Melvin was able to conclude that the
new camp sits alongside Camp 14 and has a perimeter fence that
stretches nearly 13 miles.

The facility was built since the last images of the site were
released, in December 2006.

The fence has two checkpoints and six guard posts, while a number
of accommodation units and office buildings are also clearly
visible. A coal mine within the fence does not appear to be
operational, Melvin concluded.

Very few North Koreans have managed to escape from prison camps
and to freedom outside the country's borders, but those who have
tell of terrible suffering.

Inmates - who can be imprisoned for life, along with three
generations of their families, for anything deemed to be critical
of the regime - are forced to survive by eating rats and picking
corn kernels out of animal waste.

Activists say that as many as 40 per cent of inmates die of
malnutrition, while others succumb to disease, sexual violence,
torture, abuse by the guards or are worked to death.

Men, women and children are required to work for up to 16 hours a
day in dangerous conditions, often in mines or logging camps.

Anyone sent to a North Korean labour camp is unlikely to ever
leave again, analysts say, while a failed attempt to escape
brings execution.

A new report by the National Human Rights Commission suggests
that the majority of inmates were caught attempting to flee the
country in search of food or work, instead of being incarcerated
for their political beliefs. Others were detained after being
overheard praising South Korea.

The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea has been working
with DigitalGlobe, a leading earth-imagery company, and in 2012
released the second version of its "Hidden Gulag" report, based
on images taken by satellites.

The report acknowledged the importance of Google Earth in shining
new light on the camp system.

"The dramatically improved, higher resolution satellite imagery
now available through Google Earth allows the former prisoners to
identify their former barracks and houses, their former execution
grounds and other landmarks in the camps," it notes.

Google Earth / One Free Korea

"The North Korean regime hiding and distorting the harsh reality
of North Korea's unforgiving political prison camp system is no
longer an option," said Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of
the organisation. "With constant satellite imagery, we can
maintain a watch over these camps even if no outside entry is
allowed."

In a statement issued in Geneva in early January, Navanethem
Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said, "There
were some initial hopes that the advent of a new leader might
bring about some positive change in the human rights situation.

"But a year after Kim Jong-un became the country's new supreme
leader, we see almost no sign of improvement."

Ms Pillay met two survivors of North Korean prison camps in
December and condemned the use of torture and summary executions
to control the inmates.

Ms Pillay concluded that it is time "to take stronger action, and
that a very significant first step could be made by setting up an
independent international inquiry" into "one of the worst - but
least understood and reported - human rights situations in the
world."